502 PICTURE-WRITING OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS. 
Fig. 708, drawn by the same hand, shows 
the same medicine bag temporarily hung on a 
forked stick. When the bag is carried on a 
war party it is never allowed to touch the 
ground. Also among the Ojibwa some of the 
bags whieh are considered to have the great- 
est fetichistic power are not kept in the lodges, 
as too dangerous, but are suspended from 
trees. 
FIG. 708.—Medicine bag hung up. 
Capt. Bourke (d) gives the following account of the medicine hat of 
the Apache: 
The medicine hat of the old and blind Apache medicine man, Nan-ta-do-tash, was 
an antique affair of buckskin, much begrimed with soot and soiled by long use. 
Nevertheless it gave life and strength to him who wore it, enabled the owner to peer 
into the future, to tell who had stolen ponies from other people, to foresee the ap- 
proach of an enemy, and to aid in the cure of the sick. * * * This same old man 
gaye me an explanation of all the symbolism depicted upon the hat, and a great 
deal of valuable information in regard to the profession of medicine men, their 
specialization, the prayers they recited, etc. The material of the hat, as already 
stated, was buckskin. How that was obtained I can not assert positively, but from 
an incident occurring under my personal observation in the Sierra Madre, in Mexico, 
in 1883, where our Indian scouts and the medicine men with them surrounded a 
nearly grown fawn and tried to capture it alive, as well as from other circumstances 
too long to be here inserted, I am of the opinion that the buckskin to be used for 
sacred purposes among the Apache must, whenever possible, be that of a strangled 
animal, as is the case, according to Dr. Matthews, among the Navajo. 
The body of Nan-ta-do-tash’s cap was unpainted, but the figures upon it were in 
two colors, a brownish yellow and an earthy blue, resembling a dirty Prussian blue. 
The ornamentation was of the downy feathers and black-tipped plumes of the eagle, 
pieces of abalone shell and chalchihuitl, and a snake’s rattle on the apex. 
Nan-ta-do-tash explained that the Poco on the medicine hat meant: A, clouds; 
B, rainbow; C, hail; E, morning star; F, the god of wind, with his lungs; G, the 
black “kan;” H, the great stars or suns. ‘‘Kan” is the name given to their prin- 
cipal gods. The appearance of the kan himself and of the tail of the hat suggest 
the centipede, an important animal god of the Apache. The old man said that the 
figures represented the powers to which he appealed for aid in his ‘‘medicine” and 
the kan upon whom he called for help. 
The same author says, op. cit., p. 587: 
The Apache, both men and women, wear amulets, called tzidaltai, made of iight- 
ning-riven wood, generally pine or cedar or fir from the mountain tops, which are 
highly valued and are not to be sold. These are shaved very thin and rudely cut in 
the semblance of the human form. They are in fact the duplicates, on a small scale, 
of the rhombus. Like it they are decorated with incised lines representing the 
lightning. Very often these are to be found attached to the necks of children or to 
their cradles. 
Four of the several winter counts described in the present work unite 
in specifying for the year 184344 the recapture of a fetich catled the 
great medicine arrow. 
